Central Park Gang Rape Stirs Racial Tension

April 26, 1989|By Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

NEW YORK — Trying to cool rising ethnic tensions, religious and community leaders led a prayer vigil Tuesday outside a Manhattan hospital where a victim of a savage Central Park attack remained comatose.

``It`s not racial. Don`t make it racial,`` pleaded William Perkins, a leader in the East Harlem neighborhood that is home to eight young suspects in the gang rape and beating of the 28-year-old woman.

Perkins and most other speakers at the half-hour noontime vigil said society was at least partly to blame for the assault, which one suspect boasted was done ``for fun.``

``All of us must share the blame,`` said Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a Brooklyn civil rights leader. ``This is a violent society. We are all guilty for creating it, and we must all work to eliminate it.``

The woman, an investment banker at the prestigious Wall Street firm of Salomon Brothers, had been jogging on her usual route through Central Park when she was attacked shortly after 10 p.m. last Wednesday. Though community leaders insisted race was not a factor, one of the suspects, all of whom are black, told police they had wanted to ``get a white girl.`` The victim is white.

Incriminating statements have been made by seven of the eight suspects, all part of a ``wolf pack`` of more than 30 boys, ages 13 to 17, who terrorized the park that night, police said. A New York grand jury began hearing testimony in the case Tuesday.

The teens claimed they had been out ``wilding,`` which police took to be street jargon for commiting random violence. For their evening entertainment, they would meet and attack park users, especially joggers and bicyclists. In a two-hour period Wednesday, there were eight reported attacks, most of them on runners using the jogging trail on the northern edge of the Central Park Reservoir.

The 5-foot 5-inch, 105-pound victim had been running on the 102d Street cutoff, a low-lying path strewn with broken glass, perforated by potholes and flanked by overgrown vegetation in which muggers have been known to hide. Many joggers avoid it even in daytime.

The teens chased down the jogger, beat her with a pipe and bricks and dragged her down a ravine. At least four raped her while others held her down, her hands tied behind her back with her sweatshirt.

The woman, suffering several skull fractures, stab wounds and a severe loss of blood, was found by passersby about 1:30 a.m. Doctors say she probably will live, but will suffer irreversible brain damage.

The teens face charges of second-degree attempted murder, first-degree rape and first-degree assault. They are being held without bail.

The crime has sent shock waves through the city that have yet to abate. Central Park is a huge, quiet, 840-acre rectangle of pastoral greenery-a year- round, all-hours oasis for thousands of stressed-out New Yorkers who flock each day to its shaded running trails, playgrounds, ball fields and meadows bordered by daffodils and tulips.

Though once beset by crime and widespread neglect, the park has been undergoing a $150 million renovation and now enjoys the lowest crime rate in the city.